WC: The Oni Press Panel

Heads from Oni Press opened their panel at WonderCon Friday with an open challenge to DC and Marvel editors Dan Didio and Joe Quesada, offering both of them an exhibition boxing match with the Oni editor of their choice.

“Dan and Joe, those are pretty big guys, and I’m pretty tiny, so if either one of them hit me it’d hurt pretty bad, but I can run faster,” said Randall C. Jarrell, Oni’s managing editor.

“How about we get to the books now?” said Cory Casoni, the publisher’s director of marketing.

The pair rolled out preview artwork for several upcoming and current books, including a big push to relaunch Marc Guggenheim’s “Resurrection” series.

“This is probably the biggest thing we’re doing between now and the end of summer,” Casoni said, explaining the roll-out for the series’ second volume:

The first six issues of the series’ first volume will drop on April 29, for a bargain price of $6. The black-and-white book will run 184 pages, on good quality paper.

The following Saturday is Free Comic Book Day, when readers can get a 32-page, full-color standalone story in “Resurrection,” volume two, issue zero.

The second volume, a full-color ongoing series, will then launch in June.

Casoni explained that the story of the book is in the same sci-fi alien invasion genre as “War of the Worlds” and “Independence Day,” except that it picks up the day after the invasion ends, the aliens have been beaten back, and society is in shambles.

“It’s got thematic similarities to ‘Wasteland,’” Casoni said, referring to Oni’s ongoing post-apocalyptic western genre series. “But where ‘Wasteland’ picks up like a hundred years down the road, ‘Resurrection’ is about the here and now. How do you deal with the chain of succession for President if he’s gone? How do you go about rebuilding the civic institutions you need when they’re all blasted away?”

“Wasteland,” Oni’s second longest running monthly black-and-white series, will reach issue #25 in March, featuring a double-sized, full-color, painted jumping-on point for new readers, Jarrell said. The series challenges expectations and “Mad Max” comparisons, Jarrell said, because it’s more concerned with how society is reformed in the wake of an ecological disaster, and the story contains some long-form mysteries in the tradition of TV shows like “Lost.”

“What do you see with new religions, new politics, new laws? It’s about an almost tribal new society,” Jarrell said.

A second trade collection of the web comic “North World” is on its way, Casoni said.

“It’s like ‘World of Warcraft’ meets ‘Gross Pointe Blank,’” he said. “And this one together with the first volume make a great, full story.”

A new Courtney Crumrin digest collection, “Courtney Crumrin’s Monster’s Holiday,” arrives soon as well, and includes the “Prince of Nowhere” one-shot, which Jarrell described as the darkest story of the series thus far.

The two discussed the upcoming “Scott Pilgrim” movie, which is to be written and directed by Edgar Wright, who previously directed “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.”

“Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe” will run with a holofoil cover for the first print run only.

Another upcoming book for the publisher is “Festering Romance,” Renee Lott’s tale of two people, involved in a romance, struggling to deal with ghosts in their individual pasts – literally. Casoni described it as a funny, college-aged romantic comedy.

Greg Rucka’s “Queen and Country” comics series is pretty much done for now, Casoni said, as Rucka is keeping busy writing for DC Comics and working on a third “Queen and Country” novel.

In the works, however, is a third chapter in the “Whiteout” series of OGNs, which will hopefully arrive around the same time as the movie, Casoni said. Rucka also has a private detective series in development, he then revealed. After that, a “Queen and Country” series could return, and would be in full color.